This week there has been a rebellion in the majority of the UK’s migration prisons.

The wave of strikes initially broke out in Harmondsworth IRC in London – the largest of what are increasingly becoming concentration camps, with people held because of their ethnicity and many sent to their death. There have been strikes in at least 8 of the UK’s detention estate. The people on hunger strike are protesting the terrible conditions they must endure in such facilities, with many of them detained for years without trail, having never committed crimes. Seeking asylum is not a crime.

“They can’t send us back. Some people have very bad situations in their countries. So they have to do something with us. That is what we are trying to do.

The home office doesn’t talk with us. Only the officers in here are trying to scare us.”

“The block is a cell with nothing inside no window no nothing and your there on your own. If a dog was in there, I would feel sorry for it. You can only speak to the wall. Nothing in there.”

#END DETENTION! STOP DEPORTATIONS!

NO BORDERS! – FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT FOR ALL – NOT JUST THE RICH AND PRIVILEDGED!

There will be a protest in support of the hunger strikers this Saturday 13th March in Castle Square in Swansea City Centre from 12noon until 5pm. As well as higlighting the stuggle of Read the rest of this entry »

Activists from No Borders South Wales, No Borders Bristol, and Zimbabwe Development Support Association demonstrated outside the UK Border Agency’s regional office for Wales and South West in Cardiff today in protest against the UK’s racist and repressive migration controls.

Despite some rather petty territorial behaviour from the Border Agency staff (who removed a banner that was attached to ‘their’ railings) and a short visit from local police who had been ‘sent down to check that everything was passing off peacefuly’, the event went very well.

The turn out was good, the response from passers-by was great, and we managed to hand out a load of leaflets to asylum seekers being forced to sign on inside the building. One of the main reasons we do a regular picket of this place is to distribute leaflets to the refugees who are victimised there. By informing them about the support that’s available and urging them to campaign for the right to stay in the UK, we encourage people to take control of their lives rather than submitt to whims of an asylum regime that aims to de-humanise them at every turn.

In the wake of the recent hunger strike by 50 inmates of the squalid detention prison at Campsfield IRC over their continued detention, it was truly inspiring to see people coming together to offer solidarity to migrants living in our community. The hunger strike was started by 13 Kurdish refugees after news that Hussein Ali, who had attempted to claim asylum in the UK, commited suicide two days after he was forcibly deported to Iraq.

On Saturday 8th April, over 300 people from all over Britain (including south wales) converged outside Harmondsworth & Colnbrook, two of the UK’s ten detention centres to protest the racist & unjust immigration & border regime as well as the brutal treatment that inmates face within detention prisons.

The demonstration began at around 11.30 but a large police presence forced the majority of demonstrators into a ‘pen’ outside the detention centres preventing inmates & demonstrators establishing a line of sight. However, around 40 activists who approached Colnbrook from the rear were able to make contact with the inmates who could Read the rest of this entry »